The Making of a Princely State under British Colonialism

Title: The Making of a Princely State under British Colonialism – Realm, Rule and Society in Cochin, 1791 - 1947

Author: J. Omana

Publisher: Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, 2018 (First)

ISBN: 9788193593127

Pages: 276

 

Kerala was divided into three major princely states - Travancore, Cochin and Calicut – in the first half of the eighteenth century. This narrow strip of land shielded by the southernmost spur of Western Ghats enjoyed continuous peace for most of its existence. It is not for nothing that Kerala’s tourism department markets the state as God’s Own Country. But the second half of the eighteenth century witnessed the eruption of a volcano across the border in the kingdom of Mysore. Hyder Ali usurped the throne and set up a powerful Muslim state under his son Tipu Sultan. Tipu ravaged his neighbours in a spirit of jihadi frenzy that extended to loot, arson, forced conversion, rape, enslavement and annexation of territory. The three Kerala kingdoms were no match for Tipu and the northerly Calicut and its ruler – the Zamorin – went under. Tipu cast his bloodthirsty glance at the other two. Having driven to the wall, they were compelled to enter into an alliance with the British as they were the only power who could humble Mysore. This strategy worked and Tipu left them alone. With his defeat in 1799, the British entered into further treaties with the Kerala kingdoms and ensured effective control over all aspects of the native rajas’ administration. This book narrates how Cochin was made into a modern state under British hegemony that lasted from 1791 to 1947, on the occasion of India’s independence. Traditional society in Cochin underwent conspicuous change with British influence. A society dominated by elements of medievalism and feudal institutions like caste hierarchy and customary laws faced a serious threat from the historical forces unleashed by the British. J. Omana is a reader of history at the Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit. She is actively engaged in study, teaching and research of Kerala history. She has presented papers in national and international seminars. This book is part of her research work.

 

The author concentrates on the tools by which the British Empire exerted its vice-like grip on the polity of Cochin in the first part of the book. Tipu had defeated Cochin and annexed its northern regions, most of them in today’s Thrissur district. As the Periyar river was in spate due to monsoon, he could not cross it and reach the capital at Thripunithura. The Military Assistance Treaty signed with the British enabled Cochin to regain the lost territory in return for annual payment of tribute to the British. The British sought to disarm the native troops of both Cochin and Travancore so as to ensure an unchallenged tenure as the overlords. A section of the discontented aristocrats rose in revolt as a result under the leadership of Veluthambi Dalava in Travancore and his counterpart in Cochin, Paliyath Achan. The rebellion was brutally crushed, but the British demanded war indemnity and further say in the administration of the states. Subsequently, a treaty of Perpetual Friendship and Subsidy was signed in 1809, raising the tribute to almost thrice the previous value. A British resident was stationed in Cochin who had the authority to intervene in the administrative affairs of the state. He regulated the Raja’s dealings with outside powers in accordance with the directions of the East India Company. Cochin was rendered toothless by dismantling its fortresses and garrisons. In addition to this, Cochin was forcibly absorbed into the British-Indian trade and commerce network by the Inter-Portal Trade Convention of 1865. It abolished the inland transit duties of British goods travelling through Cochin. Its commercial freedom was further cut short by the elimination of state monopoly on tobacco and equalization of the rates of customs duty at its sea ports with those obtaining at the ports of British India.

 

The British influence on the economy is described in detail. It is astonishing to note that the concept of taxation, which is the cornerstone in a modern nation’s finances, did not exist in Cochin till the advent of the British. Land revenue depended on accurate measurement of land. Survey of the agricultural and plantation lands took place. At first, two native types of estimation such as Kettezhuthu and Kandezhuthu were practiced. The former recorded the land’s area by extracting the information from the owner or tenant while the latter resorted to actual inspection at site. Eventually, modern techniques such as the cadastral survey were held. The survey adopted the ‘cent’ as the unit of land measurement which still persists among people even though the official records have changed it to ‘are’ and ‘hectare’. Earlier, the quantity of seed required to sow in a field was taken as a measure of its area. At the same time agriculture was commercialized, cropping patterns changed because people preferred to cultivate cash crops. This made the state’s economy sensitive to fluctuations in the demand for these commodities in the world market. Cochin was thus integrated into the modern transnational economy. It produced articles for the distant markets but chose to import food.

 

This book summarises the growth of industry in the state. Most of the early industrial units were small-scale and used agricultural products as raw material. Government support for the nascent industries was dismal. A section of the society such as Syrian Christians, Konkani Brahmins and Gujarati settlers handled all trade. To boost trade and industry, State Aid to Industry Act was passed in 1936, but only one loan was disbursed. Existence of all-weather motorable roads was a prerequisite for economic development, but before 1860, there were no carriage roads and only pedestrian trails existed. Goods were carried from place to place on men’s heads. Diwan Sankara Varrier is said to have inaugurated a vigorous era of road and bridge construction.

 

Even though Cochin was the tiniest in territory and weakest in political power among the three princely states of Kerala, its capital city is at present the most industrially advanced. Cochin owes this success to two events – the development of a major port and extension of a rail link to the Madras line at Shoranur. Early efforts of the traders such as Aspinwall and Cochin Chamber of Commerce in building a port are catalogued in the book. Even then, it took almost six decades for the Madras government to take it seriously. The Raja of Cochin was financially too powerless to develop a modern port. Robert Bristow was put in charge of harbour development in 1920. A sand bar having a length of almost 4 km lay at the mouth of the harbour entrance. This reduced the available draft to a measly 4 meters at this point. Only very small vessels could pass above this bar. Bristow broke through the barrier and ensured a draft of 10 meters in the channel. Meanwhile, a serious lack of vision affected the rail line extension. Even though the Madras line was broad gauge, the Shoranur – Cochin link was built as meter gauge to reduce the initial investment. Within a few years, this proved a major bottleneck in cargo movement as it had to be unloaded at Shoranur and reloaded into meter gauge wagons. A new broad gauge line was laid after some time, but almost all the bridges and culverts had to be built anew.

 

The author has used many references in the preparation of this book, but the handling of the subject matter is not inspiring. Flaws are seen in interpreting some of the conclusions. The book states that slavery was an inhuman institution that was prevalent in Cochin. Humans were reported to be ‘bought and sold like animals’ (p.206). This does not seem to be true. This information is taken from A. Sreedhara Menon’s book ‘A Survey of Kerala History’, which is quoted as ‘they could be bought and sold like cattels’. However, the original version contains the word ‘chattels’ which means something much different. It is probable that the author mistook it as ‘cattle’ and that may be the reason for the reference to animals.

 

Many passages in the text are repeated two or three times. The structure and organisation of the book needs considerable improvement. The same paragraphs on fisheries, oil extraction and similar topics are repeated in the sections on agriculture and industry. The book is modeled like a boring text book for students and no original insight is seen in the narrative. However, it uses hitherto unexplored data from the Oriental and India Office collection in London. No comparison to Travancore is made anywhere which could have been an indicator of whether Cochin was the pioneer or simply following the footsteps of its neighbour. Statistical tables are reproduced without any analysis or identification of the problems faced. The author freely quotes numerical figures such as the amount of money used for road repairs and the quantity of cargo moved through the port as part of descriptive text which severely diminishes the readability of the text.

 

The book is recommended.

 

Rating: 2 Star

 

Holy Censorship or Mistranslation?

Title: Holy Censorship or Mistranslation? Love, Gender and Sexuality in the Bible

Author: K Renato Lings

Editors: Rev J P Mokgethi-Heath, Rev Loraine Tullekin

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2021 (First)

ISBN: 9789354225413

Pages: 327

 

The holy books of all major religions came into existence many centuries ago and quite naturally, they echoed the socio-economic conditions then prevailing in their country of origin. Their claims of applicability to the whole of the world and for all time need not be taken seriously. What is then prudent for modern adherents of religion is to ignore those passages which run counter to the ethos and morality of the present and get on with their lives. However, there are people who believe in the literal validity of the ‘revealed’ text and argue that we find them anachronistic because we interpret those passages in the wrong way. Such scholars produce novel interpretations to make the holy books stand criticism in the modern world and this book is one of them. It is generally accepted that the Bible is rather harsh on sexuality and plays it down wherever possible. This book argues that it is not the case and one of its main purposes is to highlight the possible link between the current English Bible versions and negative attitudes towards same-sex love as due to mistranslation or censorship of important concepts. Whereas the book’s cover mentions sexuality, the narrative deals only with homosexuality which is equivalent to deceiving the unsuspecting readers. This book is a concise version of the author’s original work titled ‘Love Lost in Translation’, which ran into almost four times the number of pages as this book. Renato Lings was born in Denmark and is a scholar of classical languages, translation studies and theology. He has written and taught extensively on biblical interpretation, translation and issues relating to gender and sexuality. He lives in Spain.

 

Lings makes a distinction between cultural practices regarding marriage and love in the present to that of the Biblical era. Customs and traditions in those times were radically different from what is expected and done in our times and few people would advocate a return. Legal and social equality of husband and wife did not exist in antiquity. Women were the property of either her father or husband. Violence against them by an outsider was considered as an affront to the honour of their male masters and led to blood feuds. In view of this, the relevant parts should be read as a piece of cultural information about marital practices that suited the social structures of the times. Traditionally, marriage was regarded as an alliance between two families or clans. Love and attraction were accepted as valid basis for marriage only after the rise of the Romantic Movement in the nineteenth century. That the woman loves the man she is going to marry is stated only once in the Bible, in the case of Mikhal, daughter of Saul, who falls for David.

 

This book provides many examples of the case of mistranslation or censorship regarding sexuality. In the sexual realm, the tendency of English versions is towards mistranslation which does not reflect the cultural complexities governing the Hebrew and Greek universes. The apostles and early church fathers were celibate and this might have contributed to a touch of misogyny that eventually crept in. However, the author reminds Bible readers of how they are selective when it comes to paying attention to those parts of the Scripture that affect their life choices. In Genesis, when the Creator speaks of food that is apt for human beings, it explicitly suggests that they should be vegetarians or perhaps even a vegan. But this advice is nearly always ignored by Christians everywhere in the world.

 

After the cursory introduction, the author plunges straight into discovering approval for homosexuality in the Bible. The story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis is very well known as a lesson to practitioners of unnatural sex. Lings attempts to reinterpret the story in quite another way. As we know, two young men came to Sodom who were god’s representatives intending to investigate what is going on in the town. The townspeople amorously surrounded Lot’s house where they were lodged and asked him to let them ‘know’ the visitors. The Hebrew word for ‘know’ is yadah which is used many times in the Testaments in a sexual sense. Lings argues that probably the translators misunderstood it when the locals had wanted only to interrogate the newcomers, in the literal sense of the word. Also, Lot’s offer of his two unmarried daughters in lieu of the visitors is in fact just a promise to offer the girls as hostages in the safe and honourable custody of the people as long as the guests remained in Lot’s house. The people did not listen to the man’s entreaties and God destroyed the place with fire and brimstone. This should be acknowledged as a punishment for mistreating immigrants to the town in the light of another verse quoted from Exodus supporting the argument. Even the earliest translations of the Bible contain the story as we know it today and Lings’ version is palatable only to people who are strongly determined to accommodate the sexual minorities in the scheme of the Divine. Also, it is argued that some English versions are prone to exaggerate the language when confronted with what they perceive to be same-sex eroticism. In several cases, their renderings are considerably harsher than the Greek source (p.98).

 

After leaving the Old Testament which is written in Hebrew, Lings turns to the New, which is in Greek. Paul’s letter to the Romans categorically condemns homosexuality. Nazi condemnation of the gays was based on the Apostle’s letter. Here, the author claims that translators tended to regard several Greek expressions as references to same-sex relationships even when they simply describe unconventional behavior. What Paul expressed was concerns about idolatry and orgiastic practices said to be prevalent in pagan Rome. The book also includes a few examples where no deviant interest is involved as vindicating homo-eroticism. The love and dedication of Ruth to her mother-in-law Naomi in the Book of Ruth is a case described in detail. Both were widows and Ruth migrated out of her homeland for the sake of Naomi. This is alluded as a lesbian affair when nothing of the sort was indicated in the Scriptures. The relationship between David and Jonathan is also depicted in the same light. Jesus’ love for his best disciple described in the Gospel adds one more point to the author’s list as he claims that the wordings found in modern versions reveal considerable discomfort among translators and commentators in relation to the intimacy between males depicted in the narrative. Contrary to popular perception that it was John the Apostle being referred to, Lings suggests Lazarus, the person whom Jesus raised from the dead, as the best candidate.

 

The most startling claim in the book is that God created the first human being as a hermaphrodite! The Scripture says he created the groundling in his image, male and female He created them (Gen 1:27). This means a single being, both male and female, was created in view of a later verse which declares that a distinct female (Eve) was created out of it after some time. Is he unintentionally referring to the concept of Ardhanarishwara in Indian mythology? Lings suggests that this is an indication that the Creator has not limited to a single gender and the first human being is endowed with a dual nature containing an equal number of male and female components, or in other words, a bi-gender hermaphrodite (p.246-7). Then why did the Christian world not been able to find this out so far? The author provides an answer for this too. The early church did not read the creation story in the source language of Hebrew. They depended on the early Greek translation called Septuagint. Later, as the Roman church spread to Europe, it studied the Bible entirely in the Latin translation called the Vulgate made by St. Jerome. The Hebrew text was rediscovered only during the Reformation.

 

As noted earlier, there is a distinct element of cheating the readers in conveniently omitting the word homosexuality in the book’s subtitle. This is a marketing strategy as its inclusion would have considerably cut down the number of people who would read this book. This aspect is responsible for removing one deserving star from the book’s rating. The book is easily readable and the author’s scholarship in the Hebrew and Greek languages shine through the detailed analyses and arguments. Moreover, the postulates in this volume provide much food for thought for Bible scholars.

 

The book is not recommended for general readers.

 

Rating: 2 Star

 

Aryan Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism

Title: Aryan Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism

Author: Shrikant G. Talageri

Publisher: Voice of India, 1993 (First)

ISBN: 8185990026

Pages: 408

 

According to Semitic tradition, it was in Babylon that God cursed humanity to split into mutually incomprehensible language groups so that no cooperation would be possible among them. Bengali, the language spoken on the east coast of India would sound like gibberish to a Lithuanian speaker in northwest Europe. However, as the Europeans began their explorations around the world in the Renaissance period, they began to notice similarities in words or their roots cutting across continents and mountain ranges. After the colonization of India, British scholars learned Indian languages and an unmistakable relationship between Sanskrit and European languages were established. Though confused at first, they postulated that an ancient language, called proto-Indo European, flourished somewhere in south Russia from where it spread across the entire landmass of Eurasia through migration. In the case of India, it was assumed that an invading group, calling themselves Aryans, annexed India and defeated the local inhabitants called Dravidians. This Aryan invasion theory was given recognition and support of the Indian historical establishment that was keen to put down Hindu nationalism, the consensus being that all major racial groups of modern India came to the land as invaders. However, modern historical research and its methodology firmly reject the concept of ‘Aryan’ as denoting a human race. Now it is well established that the terms Aryan and Dravidian refer to language groups. Moreover, genetic data point to the fact that the people of India essentially belongs to a single race, of course with miscegenation over a large period of time. This book analyses the features of the Aryan invasion theory and pinpoints its illogical conclusions and false claims. It no doubt tries to vindicate Indian nationalism, but the encyclopedic nature of facts and powerful insight make it a unique one. Shrikant G. Talageri is a Mumbai-based scholar who has made a special study on Aryans and Vedas. He lives and works in Mumbai and has studied his mother-tongue Konkani in much detail.

 

Talageri begins with a critical evaluation of Indian historiography after independence. During this period, Indian history was formulated, taught and propagated by leftist intellectuals who were more interested in proving Marx right than weaving a narrative that bound the newly-built nation together. Since destruction of national identities is one of the basic tenets of Marxist ideology, it has been falsified on a grand scale, with the sole aim and intention of uprooting and destroying India’s national awareness and ethos. Nehru reached a symbiosis with them and placed them at the highest levels of academia. In return, they sang his praise as long as his actions did not inconvenience them. Nehruvian vision of Indian history was nothing more than a mix of various imperialist versions that play their politics with impunity and self-righteous aggressiveness. These historians accepted the consensus among European historians of the nineteenth century that India witnessed an Aryan invasion around 1500 BCE which devastated the indigenous culture and languages and replaced it with the Indo-European language of Sanskrit. At one time, the prestige of the European scholarship was so overpowering that even eminent nationalists like Tilak and Savarkar had subscribed to this theory. Their intention was to prove that just as the British and Muslim invaders had come from the outside, so also were the Hindus. By corollary, it was also claimed that Christianity, Islam and Hinduism are all equally foreign or equally native to India.

 

Leftists always negated India’s nationhood. Mirroring Churchill’s claim that India was only a geographic term like the equator, rather than a nation, they granted each language group a claim for nationhood like what we see in Europe. Eminent leftist thinkers in the British era professed that India was a collection of up to sixteen nationalities and hence they wholeheartedly supported the Pakistan demand. The author strongly refutes this argument and comes up with self-evident examples from India’s ancient past to prove that it always had a consciousness of being one nation. Even a dry compendium on grammar like Panini’s Ashtadhyayi provides a nearly complete count of all the janapadas in ancient India. Panini was a native of the region around Peshawar in today’s Pakistan. The Vanaparva in Mahabharata gives details of the pilgrimages undertaken by the Pandavas to numerous places all over India.

 

Talageri has studied in detail all the hypotheses and conclusions of his opponents before demolishing them ideologically. The invasion theorists were forced to make compromising concessions to account for the widespread inconsistencies in what they predicted to what is actually practiced in society. Indra and Brahma were prominent Vedic gods, but nobody worship them now. Besides, there are no references or collective memory of any places outside India in the Vedas. Even according to invasion theorists, most of the aspects of Hinduism like the use of religious marks on the body, the idea of transmigration of souls, enumeration of the days by phases of moon (tithi), zoomorphic aspects of worshipping deities, most gods and goddesses except Brahma and the concept of holy places and rivers are all pre-Aryan. The Aryan invaders are credited only with the authorship of the Vedas and development of Sanskrit. But this looks more like assimilation rather than conquest. Close relationship of the language spoken in North India and Europe can be explained by other means as well. The author then presents the role of Hindu nationalists in safeguarding the national well-being. Hindu nationalism is not concerned with the ancestry of communities. It believes only in identifying the de-Indianizing elements and doing whatever has to be done in this matter.

 

This book firmly points out that the term ‘Aryan’ denote a language group and definitely not a human race. Even Max Muller had discounted the idea of there being an actual race of ‘Aryans’. After the racist orgy indulged in by the Nazis, the concept has become even more taboo. The Brahui language spoken in Baluchistan belongs to the Dravidian group, but in racial features, the speakers are identical to their neighbours and anthropologically Iranians. Similarly, Sinhalese language belongs to the Aryan group, but its speakers do not show any racial affinity to features traditionally assigned to Aryans. Philologists have reconstructed a proto-Indo European language based on cognate words found in all of them. On this basis, they found that modern Lithuanian preserves this archaic general language structure. Hence, the original homeland of Aryans cannot be far from Lithuania, so the logic went. South Russia was eventually postulated as a likely place. The entire Aryan invasion theory pivots on this claim. Talageri analyses a lot of linguistic principles and concludes that Sanskrit is the closest to the proto language in respect of both vocabulary and general linguistic form. This book claims that Sanskrit was born in India and it is the original homeland of the Indo-European language group. The author’s arguments are so brilliantly technical that readers are not competent enough to judge their acceptance among other learned peers of Talageri.

 

There are no references to any places outside India in the Rig Veda and it is certain that it was composed in the region of Saptasindhu or Punjab. However, there are mentions of the eastern and western seas in it. The sun is said to rise from and set in the sea. This is not valid in Punjab and shows a familiarity to the southern peninsula. There are indications that they were familiar with places as far east as Bihar and as far south as Maharashtra. Surprisingly, this is the geographical extent of the Indo-Aryan languages even to this day. Contrary to what is made to believe today, the enemies of Aryans, called Dasa/Dasyu are not non-Aryans of India, but instead, a section of Aryans in ancient Iran. According to Iranian texts, Asuras are their gods and Devas demons. The supreme god is Ahura Mazda. Minding the interchange of the sound ‘h’ with ‘s’ in the Persian language, this is similar to Asura Mazda. Their supreme demon is Angra Mainyu, whch is derived from Angiras, the major rishi family in Rig Veda. Mainyu in Rig Veda is a particularly destructive form of Indra which is represented as anger or passion personified. This and a set of detailed arguments prove that the conflicts mentioned in Rig Veda were between the Vedic people and Iranians.

 

This is a very well-researched book with startling conclusions. It posits the origin of the entire Indo-European languages in India by proposing three centres of influence in pre-historic India. What became the European group was prominent in the northwest of India. The Vedic language and Iranian group formed the centre in Punjab and all present Indo-Aryan languages spoken in India formed the inner group. This also explains why they are more familiar with non-Aryan languages whose speakers somewhat constituted the areas where they are spoken now. The book begins with a goal-setting foreword by Sita Ram Goel, the stalwart of Hindu nationalism. The book makes some deep phonetic and philological analyses which most readers would find cumbersome. The text is often firmly fixed on the target and readability suffers in some chapters. Absence of an index is a serious concern. Another drawback is that the author accepts the genealogical tables of kings given in the Puranas at face value. He questions their regnal years and arrives at a reasonable value, but the number of kings is simply acknowledged as true.

 

The book is highly recommended.

 

Rating: 4 Star